British-made products are known all over the world for their quality and uniqueness.
I’ve touched based with Barry Jordan, from Gloucestershire-based company, Green Gourmet so that they can share their export journey with you.
So Barry, tell us a bit about Green Gourmet and what you do
Well Green Gourmet is a food innovation company with a mission to be the best at food innovation; the most creative, most responsive and most trusted. We were founded in 1991 as a one man business by CEO Adam Starkey, and we’ve grown into a 38 strong team that has won the leading awards in its field and were a finalist in the 2015 West of England Business of the Year awards. In recent years, we have become an export business and our products are now supplied to 7 countries outside of the UK.
Who is your market?
From it's outset, Green Gourmet has served the education catering market. This niche segment was selected due to the highly “grouped” nature of the supply chain. For example, 300+ schools in a city all serve the same menu choices on the same day.
So how did your strategy lead you into exporting?
A notable drawback of being 100% dedicated to education is its seasonal nature. To balance these troughs in income during the holiday periods, Green Gourmet took the measured risk to enter the leisure catering arena. In what is widely regarded as a closed shop for new suppliers, Green Gourmet has grown sales in the on-board travel catering market from £0 to over £3m in just 4 years. It now trades with world leading airline caterers and its products are served on BA, Virgin Atlantic, Thomson, Monarch and Qantas. They are also exported for service on Norwegian, Jet Star Australia and Etihad worldwide.
Have you made any mistakes with your export strategy and what did you do to overcome them?
Moving into the world of international travel catering has been a great experience for the team and a very quick learning curve. Looking back, at the time we originally moved into this market we were also exploring others too. We spread ourselves too thinly, taking our eye of the ball in our primary market of education and growth stalled as a result. We’ve learned to be more disciplined and to focus solely on education and travel to earn the right to experiment in new channels later.
So it’s fair to say that Green Gourmet now better off because of that mistake?
Yes definitely! In addition, our team has been strengthened in the right areas. For example, our new product development team is now up to 14.
How did the Department for International Trade help?
The support we have received from our International Trade Advisor, Hilary Green at DIT South West has been great in helping us get up and running in the business of exporting. DIT is always open to finding ways to help us build new connections in the market and members of our team have been on numerous training sessions run by the organisation. We have also been the beneficiaries of a number of grants that have helped to fund key sales and marketing activity such as our attendance at the World Travel Catering Expo in Hamburg. We have now attended this for the last four years and, during the 2015 event, one of our products received a prestigious OnBoard Hospitality Award.
So what does the future hold for the company for the next few years?
The future prospects for Green Gourmet are truly excellent - it has an attitude that there will always be more to achieve and that the best years still to come. The number of new bespoke project requests increases each month and a myriad of opportunities lay ahead both in its current markets and in new ones.
Are you planning to conquer any new markets soon?
Over the next 12 months we will work to strengthen our global supply connections. We have selected a target list of airlines, now trade with 8 of these and in talks with a number of others. Through new product development we aim to become the “turn to” company to help these drive and accomplish the change they want to deliver.
If you would like to consider exporting for the first time and don’t know how to start, register at Export Savvy and take a look at the bite sized snippets of information to help you get in the right mindset for exporting. Our International Trade Centre team will be happy to assist if you have any questions or would like to be referred to an International Trade Adviser like Green Gourmet did. Please contact the ITC on 01275 370944 or email ditsw@mobile.trade.gov.uk
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